


we'll do the things that lovers do

by renaissances



Category: TOMORROW X TOGETHER | TXT (Korea Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Non-Famous, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Fluff, Kissing, M/M, Making Out, the "moving in together" conversation, yeonbin? in love? groundbreaking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-19
Updated: 2020-11-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:20:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27517504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/renaissances/pseuds/renaissances
Summary: Falling in love with Yeonjun wasn’t actually like falling, or even tripping. It wasn’t like a tidal wave. It was just a gentle slide downward, like wading out into a sun-warm swimming pool. Soobin let the water carry him on his back, let it lap around his shoulders and his neck, and then he closed his eyes and just… sank. He held his breath just before he went under—prepared, as he likes to be in all things.(Or, Soobin and Yeonjun play house for a day, but this was never just a game.)
Relationships: Choi Soobin/Choi Yeonjun
Comments: 90
Kudos: 428
Collections: txt fic fest





	we'll do the things that lovers do

**Author's Note:**

> thank you to the prompter who probably expected this to be like 2k max (i don't know how it ended up so long, but i blame soobin), to the wonderful mod for putting together this fest, to friends who shall remain nameless until reveals for all their help and general cheerleading, and to you, for reading! i hope you enjoy!
> 
> (now that reveals are out... hi! it's me! hugest thank yous to hamna and kia for reading this before it was posted and offering so much love and support, and to everyone who cheered me on even when they had no idea what i was writing! i love you all!)

By the end of July, the heat has grabbed hold of Seoul in a lover’s embrace, like it can’t get close enough. Multiple heat wave advisories have been sent out by now, warning people to hydrate and stay indoors—which would be fine, if Soobin’s air conditioning unit hadn’t sputtered its way to a pitiful death two hours earlier.

The predicament leads him here, sweating buckets as he stands with his hands on his hips in the middle of his one-room apartment. Soobin’s gone without cool air all day, meaning he’s had to change his shirt three separate times because of pit stains. The heat is oppressive, like being mummy-wrapped in cling film: it’s too hot to sleep and too hot to be awake. Too hot to cook, but too hot to go outside and buy some food. He is a hungry, sweaty, irritated boy, and he just wants to breathe without feeling like he’s inhaling his own evaporated perspiration. Soobin is never going to complain about how bitterly cold Seoul winters can be for the rest of his days.

Unpeeling his shirt—or maybe Yeonjun’s; their closets have started to meld together by this point—from the back of his neck, Soobin guesses he could grit his teeth and ride this out until the landlord responds to the work order he sent in three days ago, but getting her to read texts about anything other than rent payments is like pulling teeth. He can’t even open a window because he lives on the top floor of the building and heat rises, and sweat is collecting fucking everywhere, in places Soobin didn’t even know he _could_ sweat, and there’s no way he’s sleeping here tonight. It is just so goddamn hot.

Soobin considers his options.

The thing is, he knows he should call Beomgyu.

It would make so much sense to call Beomgyu. Beomgyu has what Kai likes to call “shmoney,” the kind of wealth that still makes Soobin goggle a little bit even after years of friendship. Beomgyu’s parents put him up in his own apartment near the city center at the start of sophomore year—apparently the “character building” he’d undergone by living in the freshman dorms was not enough to outweigh the concerns of his lovely but overbearing mother—and he’s been living there ever since. Beomgyu has a spare bedroom, and central ( _working!_ ) AC, and, like, three different water pressure settings for the showerhead in the bathroom. It would feel akin to staying at a luxury hotel for the weekend, just with a lot more quality friendship time spent getting his ass kicked in Overwatch—because of course Beomgyu also has a gaming setup that could make a man’s mouth water.

Soobin should call Beomgyu.

Soobin calls Yeonjun.

“Hello?”

“Hyung,” Soobin sighs, because even speech at a normal volume exerts too much energy at this point. He drags a hand over his damp face, wiping the sweat his palm comes away with on his shirt. Ugh.

“Soobinnie,” his boyfriend sings down the line, voice honey-sweet. Soobin envies Yeonjun’s good mood as much as it makes him smile. He tries to picture Yeonjun in his head, his artfully styled hair that’s getting long these days, his sun-pinkened cheeks. Is he wearing those new shoes Soobin saw him shopping online for last week? Maybe he’s put on eye makeup today, the barest hint of gloss and shimmer. Soobin sees him everyday, could draw and color him from memory alone with his eyes closed, but imagination’s never enough, of course. “What’s wrong? You never call me.”

“You’re usually sitting right next to me, I don’t have to call you,” Soobin teases.

“But I miss you when you’re away.” He can hear Yeonjun’s pout and it’s so ridiculous how Soobin knows he actually means it, he’s not even totally making it up. It’s so ridiculous how Soobin loves that.

“Well, maybe I can help you with that if you help me with something. Are you home right now?”

“Oh?” Yeonjun’s voice lilts in curiosity. “No, I’m buying groceries, but I’ll be home soon. Why?”

Soobin hastily rearranges his mental drawing of Yeonjun to place him in the produce section, knocking on melons to check for ripeness (he does it every time, even though he’s never actually bought a melon, simply to make Soobin laugh at his impression of Yeonjun’s mother). Now he can hear faint voices and shuffling in the background. Maybe Yeonjun has a basket dangling from the crook of his elbow, filled with vegetables, and always a few too many tangerines to be necessary. Maybe he’s holding on to a couple snacks he found and couldn’t resist.

God. Soobin’s so lovesick he’s daydreaming about Yeonjun even when he’s got him on the phone.

This isn’t a new problem by any means, and if you ask Soobin it’s not really a problem at all, but still. He can’t bring himself to regret not calling Beomgyu.

“Hello? Soobin?”

Soobin clears his throat, lifts his arms up a little because his armpits are already getting a little musty again. The reminder of the ungodly heat kicks him into action. “Um, the AC unit in my apartment broke and I’m pretty sure it can’t get fixed until the weekend’s over.”

“Shit, that’s awful.”

“Yeah. Hyung, I think I’m sweating out of my ears,” Soobin whines. “I’m not even sure that’s biologically possible.”

“My poor baby,” Yeonjun hums. Soobin pauses for a moment to see if Yeonjun will offer himself, but isn’t surprised when nothing comes; Yeonjun does always enjoy it when Soobin uses his words.

“If it’s too much of a bother, I get it, but… do you think I could stay over tonight? I’m just not sure I can take another hour of this without getting heat stroke.” Soobin rushes to add, “I bet Beomgyu will take me if you can’t, though.”

“Beomgyu will do no such thing,” Yeonjun sniffs, and it makes Soobin bite back a grin because he knows it’s a tender spot, Beomgyu and Yeonjun. Even if they’re all in on the joke, it’s fun sometimes to poke the bear.

“Oh, he won’t?” Soobin asks.

“He is not getting in the way of our sleepover,” Yeonjun says firmly, and Soobin is surprised by the small wave of relief that washes over him. Yeonjun has never told him no, but he guesses he wasn’t sure whether this would be the thing to break that streak. He’s glad it’s not, and he’s even more glad for Yeonjun’s phrasing: a _sleepover_.

Not just refuge from an overheated apartment, or Soobin crashing for the night. A _sleepover_. Secrets and junk food and memories. Kisses and laughter and maybe not very much sleep at all.

“I like the sound of that,” Soobin whispers. “I can really stay with you? It’s okay?”

“Of course it is, don’t be silly.”

“Oh, uh, well, thanks, hyung.” Soobin likes how, when he asks for favors, hesitant and guilty and feeling like he shouldn’t be, Yeonjun says _of course_ instead of just _yes. Of course,_ like it’s obvious. Like it would never occur to him not to help Soobin. “That’s really nice of you.”

Yeonjun laughs through the phone. Maybe he’s near the checkout line now, maybe he’s got everything he needs. “Come over, baby,” Yeonjun says, and Soobin doesn’t need to see him to hear the smile in his voice, warm warm warm.

* * *

The story is not that long or complicated. Nothing about Soobin and Yeonjun is long and complicated, really. Here’s how it happened: Soobin met Choi Yeonjun on a Monday in autumn. By the following Saturday, they were on date number four.

It was love at first sight, maybe. Soobin doesn’t totally believe in that kind of thing, but Yeonjun does, so it doesn’t really matter what Soobin believes. The point is that within a week, Soobin inexplicably found himself being _wooed_.

“Don’t you think you guys are moving a bit fast?” Beomgyu asked him with a raised eyebrow when Soobin met up with him for coffee—or in Beomgyu’s case, hot chocolate—so he could freak out about how cute Yeonjun had been during date number three (a trip to the local cat cafe, which really was just unfair. Soobin was a weak man, he wasn’t built to withstand things like Yeonjun cooing at a fat tabby that had attempted to climb onto the top of his head).

“I mean, I guess,” Soobin answered Beomgyu’s question, stealing a bite of Beomgyu’s blueberry muffin and steadfastly ignoring the look Beomgyu gave him in return. “But I don’t know. It’s kind of exciting, in a way.”

And it was. Exciting. Yeonjun seemed to move fast in all areas of life: Soobin had literally met him because Yeonjun almost knocked him over running from a dance team rehearsal on one side of campus to lunch with six of his friends on the other. As he’d steadied the both of them, Yeonjun had apologized, asked Soobin if he was okay, called him cute, and invited him out tomorrow night all in one breath.

Normally, Soobin’s disbelief would have rendered him speechless, but the thing about Yeonjun is that you get swept up in his nonstop pace and general zest for life very quickly. You take one look at those long lashes and that pout and throw your reservations out the window. So Soobin, knowing full well he loathed talking to strangers and being in unknown social environments, stammered that it was okay, he was fine, thank you, and yes, he’d love to meet up for dinner (one-on-one) and drinks (with Yeonjun’s friends).

Dating Yeonjun at first was a little like attending a really fancy all-you-can-eat buffet: so indulgent Soobin almost thought he should feel a little guilty for how much he enjoyed it. Just when you think you’ve had enough something else catches your eye, and you go back for seconds, and thirds, and fourths. Dinner and drinks became afternoon picnics in the park, which became study dates in the library, which became making out in an abandoned classroom in the social sciences building. Soobin’s phone filled up with cute couple selcas and “ _good morning~_ ” texts and a fair amount of “ _???? did i just see you with choi yeonjun on the quad_ ” messages from Beomgyu.

Soobin had always considered himself a rational person. He had scoffed at high school sweethearts who stayed together in college and at contrived romantic comedies that showed people tripping over themselves to fall in love. He was generally content to remain on the sidelines. But meeting Yeonjun had unlocked some hungry animal inside him, some monstrous thing with grabby hands whose voice spoke the most shameful, yearning whisper: _Pay attention to me._

“Just be careful, hyung,” Beomgyu warned him, that time in the coffeeshop but other times, too. It became something of a mantra for Beomgyu, when Soobin found himself tagging along as Yeonjun flitted between parties, when Yeonjun started stealing Soobin’s hoodies to wear to sleep. “You still haven’t known him for very long, no matter how well it’s going so far.”

People said that to him a lot. _Be careful_. Their caution wasn’t necessarily misplaced. Soobin wasn’t an idiot; he knew about Yeonjun. Yeonjun was a cool sunbae. Yeonjun was the dance team’s pride and joy. Yeonjun had a veritable harem of boys in his year who followed him around like puppies. Yeonjun had a string of broken hearts still wrapped around his pinky, a chain of them long enough to trail against the floor. It wasn’t his fault—he couldn’t love _everyone_ back.

He loved Soobin back, though.

He replied to Soobin’s texts within seconds. He made these thoughtful little playlists for him, titled things like _nights with you feel like this_. One time, when Soobin was too sick to go to class, Yeonjun barged into his kitchen and cooked up enough soup for thirty people, claiming Soobin needed him there to nurse him back to health. Soobin didn’t, but he liked the way Yeonjun insisted on spoon-feeding him, rubbing his back and calling him baby, _baby, we have to get you better soon or else what will I do?_

(“Gross,” Beomgyu deadpanned when Soobin relayed this information to him. “You’re gonna make me throw up.”

“Oh, like you don’t want to do the same thing to Taehyun.”

Beomgyu pulled his shoe off and threw it at Soobin’s face.)

And if Soobin had had any doubts about Yeonjun’s rather obvious affections, they were resolved by the end of the first month, when Yeonjun asked him to meet up for coffee:

Before Soobin could even set his bag down and slide into his chair at their little cafe table, Yeonjun fixed him with a determined stare and said, “I want to be your boyfriend.”

“Um,” Soobin said. He had been in the middle of deciding whether he wanted an Americano or a latte, so this came as quite a shock to him. But maybe it shouldn’t have. “You do?”

“Yes.” Yeonjun was looking him right in the eye. He wasn’t blushing, not even a little bit, so Soobin blushed for the both of them. Yeonjun wasn’t embarrassed about asking. Soobin’s learned that once Yeonjun decides he wants something, he will keep working until he gets it. He doesn’t care what the task requires of him.

“That’s—oh.”

“You know I like you, right? Just you. I like you a lot,” Yeonjun said, and he adjusted the neckline of his sweater so it laid flat across his chest. Soobin’s eyes followed the movement, and then got stuck somewhere around Yeonjun’s exposed collarbones. “I’ve tried to be very clear about it.”

“I—yes, you have been, hyung.” Soobin cleared his throat, tried to sit up straight and act the right amount of mature for something like this. He was totally out of his depth, floating skyward, no tether to grab onto. “I… I like you too.”

Yeonjun perked up in his seat a little, like he wasn’t surprised to hear the information but he was certainly pleased. It made Soobin smile; this really was just a foregone conclusion, wasn’t it? It would always be Yeonjun, always be the two of them.

“So can I?” Yeonjun asked, eagerness embodied. “Can I be your boyfriend?”

Soobin looked him over from across the table, his bright blue hair, his smile that was brighter still. Yeonjun didn’t seem like the kind of person who should be capable of stumbling into Soobin’s mundane life. He looked like he belonged in a different world, on magazine covers, inside music videos. He was well-dressed and charismatic and _interested_ , and surely Soobin had made him up. Surely, if he blinked, Choi Yeonjun would wink right out of existence, like the briefest and brightest of dreams.

So Beomgyu was extremely judgmental, but he wasn’t entirely misguided. Soobin knew he should be careful. He was on the upward curve of the rollercoaster, before the drop, and Yeonjun was in control of the train.

But it didn’t always feel like that, not when Yeonjun took him out to eat every Friday and always stacked the plates for the waitstaff at the end of the meal. It didn’t feel like that when Yeonjun touched him with the utmost reverence, like paintbrush to glass, brushes of fingertips and a warm hand on the small of Soobin’s back. It didn’t feel like that when Yeonjun sobbed to him over the phone about a failed exam, showed up at his door and then shook apart in Soobin’s arms.

It didn’t feel like that when Yeonjun kissed him for the first time, then the second, then the third.

Three kisses is not many. Three weeks is barely anything. The boy across the table was still shiny and new, a puzzle only half-solved. But Soobin was beginning to put the rest of the pieces together in his mind. Start with the edges and work inwards, until the image takes shape.

 _I could love you,_ he thought as Yeonjun snatched up his hand and pressed his warm fingertips to Soobin’s heart line. _Maybe I already do, maybe I’m halfway there. Maybe you’re halfway there too._

The thing about being in love is exactly that. The _in_ part. It signifies you’ve arrived somewhere you didn’t used to be. At some point, whether you’re aware of it or not, you enter, and you’re changed. You open your curtains and the light will find you.

So Soobin did. He laid a hand on Yeonjun’s jaw and kissed him, awkward and sweet over the cafe table. He let Yeonjun reach up and guide him by the chin, _like this, like this._ The place was too crowded for it to be decent but Soobin, for once, found that he didn’t care.

“Of course,” he said. He pulled back, red all over, heart a mess but settling already into something steady and true. “Of course you can, hyung.”

So if you asked their classmates, the girls who whisper as they walk by, here’s what they’d tell you: Choi Yeonjun cracked Soobin’s heart open like it was an egg, stripped it down to the gooey, golden center in a matter of minutes. If he were even a bit careless he could reduce it to a broken, runny mess.

But Soobin knows what everyone else doesn’t: Yeonjun would never be careless. Soobin thinks maybe that’s what he likes about Yeonjun most of all.

* * *

The subway ride takes about twenty minutes, but Soobin feels like he’s spent an hour on the surface of the sun by the time he arrives at Yeonjun’s squat apartment building. The train is crowded, but he manages to snag a seat for himself and leans back in it as sweat collects at the backs of his knees, in the crooks of his elbows. The heat presses even closer, like a snug turtleneck sweater. He closes his eyes and counts seconds, counts sheep, counts the times he’s made Yeonjun laugh. There are many of those, but he tries his best to remember each one.

The walk from the station is not much of a reprieve, especially without cover from the sun. The seasons in Seoul are more than weather, more than feeling, an overwhelming full-body plunge. Summer has seeped its way into Soobin’s very bones.

Yeonjun lives on the top floor of a small building occupied mostly by other college students. One of them is leaving right as Soobin reaches the door, and she holds it open for him.

“Hi, Soobin-ssi,” she says politely, because they’ve met a few times now. The first time he’d come over Yeonjun had practically paraded him around the building for introductions, since of course he’s friends with all his neighbors. “Here to visit Yeonjun-oppa?”

“Here to mooch off his AC, more like,” Soobin corrects her with a cheeky smile. He can already feel the cool blast inside, turning his skin tacky as it dries. She laughs.

“If our building is a better alternative to anywhere else, I really pity your living situation,” she jokes. “Stay cool, Soobin-ssi!”

He bids her farewell and slides past her to the elevator. She may think the building leaves much to be desired, and sure, maybe it’s nothing like Beomgyu’s place, but it’s much cleaner and brighter than anywhere Soobin’s ever lived on his own. He spends the elevator ride up fixing his appearance in the mirrored wall’s reflection. His hair is almost dripping, and his face is shiny.

Yeonjun’s seen him with a high fever before, though, he rationalizes. They haven’t made a habit of hiding their ugliness from each other.

When Soobin steps out of the elevator, Yeonjun is already waiting for him in the open doorway to his apartment, almost bouncing when he sees the doors slide apart.

“Soobinnie,” he calls, and Soobin grins at his visible pout. “You took _forever_.”

“It’s been half an hour since I called you.”

“Exactly. Come here.”

Yeonjun goes in to hug Soobin but is stopped by a hand on his broad chest.

“Too hot,” Soobin whines.

“I know, I am.”

Soobin rolls his eyes. “Not funny.”

“Damn, you can’t even let me have _one_ joke?” Yeonjun huffs, leaning closer, and stops to wrinkle his nose. “Actually, yeah, it is too hot. You kind of stink, babe.”

“I just rode public transportation in the middle of a heat wave, of course I stink. I’m boiling.”

Yeonjun hums in sympathy. “Go take a shower and I’ll get you some clothes to change into. You know where the bathroom is.”

Soobin does know. He’s slept over before, spent full weekends in this apartment. They’ve watched movies on the couch and studied at the kitchen table, and Yeonjun’s let him shower here more than a few times. Soobin knows how to get the water temperature just right and which hook to hang his towel on and everything.

“Okay,” he says. And then, because even though he’s gross he missed Yeonjun too, missed those sparkling eyes and mischievous smile so much he could picture it in perfect detail, he says, “Aren’t you gonna kiss me hello?”

“Oh, Soobin.” Yeonjun pinches his waist, playful. “All you have to do is ask.”

The kiss Yeonjun presses to the corner of his mouth is surprisingly chaste, though Soobin guesses it’s because they’re still standing in the hallway. Just a sweet peck, a promise for more later once he’s washed the grime off him. Soobin savors the soft memory of it as he trades his sneakers for house slippers and heads straight into Yeonjun’s apartment for the bathroom (first door on the right).

There’s dried toothpaste stains on the sink because Yeonjun still doesn’t clean his bathroom thoroughly enough. It honestly should probably gross Soobin out a little bit, but he’s seen worse living in the dorms. Plus, something about it makes Yeonjun a little more human to him, fleshes out the image Soobin has of him in his mind just a little more, a little closer to reality. Every day, every detail gets Soobin a little closer to solving that puzzle, to knowing all of Yeonjun, in his beautiful, flawed entirety.

 _You’re crazy_ , Soobin thinks as he shucks off his shirt and turns the shower knob. _Waxing poetic over some fucking toothpaste streaks. Get a hold of yourself._

It’s hard to, though, once he’s stepped under the water, once he’s lathering Yeonjun’s body wash over his shoulders and down his arms, earthy and intoxicating. Soobin closes his eyes and lets the spray wash it all down the drain, but the heady scent lingers.

When Soobin inhales, Yeonjun is all he breathes in.

* * *

“I want to ask you something,” Yeonjun says when Soobin steps back into the living room, dressed in one of Yeonjun’s t-shirts and a pair of basketball shorts. He feels human again, clean and dry except for his damp hair, and the floor is cool and smooth beneath his bare feet.

“Oh?” Soobin hums, distracted by the pink glitter on Yeonjun’s eyelids. He must’ve applied it while he was waiting for Soobin to get out. “You look pretty. I like the pink.”

Yeonjun flushes. His mouth was half-formed around a sentence but it eludes him, and he just says, “Thank you.”

Sometimes Yeonjun wears makeup. That’s a newer thing for him, one he tries very hard to be confident about, though he’s not always successful. Putting on makeup is a sign of vulnerability for Yeonjun in the way that taking it off is for other people, and Soobin is lucky that Yeonjun trusts him enough to ask his opinion on eyeshadow colors, to let him watch as he sweeps a wide brush over his cheekbones.

Soobin makes it a point to encourage him, tells him he looks pretty (because it’s true) and that no one will care if he leaves the house like that—and if they did, that was their problem and not Yeonjun’s (this is also true, but much harder to convince Yeonjun of). On their one-month anniversary, Soobin gifted Yeonjun an eyeshadow palette based on a recommendation by his older sister. Yeonjun stared at it for five minutes and when he looked back up at Soobin, his eyes were glassy. He still keeps it in the drawer of his nightstand. Another piece of the puzzle.

“Anyway,” Yeonjun continues once he gets his bearings again. “Don’t interrupt me. I want to ask you something.”

“Okay.”

“Wait, actually, first I want to ask you something else.” This is what Soobin likes to call a Yeonjunism: he jumps between ideas at lightning speed and sometimes you get lost in the dust he leaves behind.

“Okay,” Soobin says again, and then he waits, patiently. That’s a Soobinism, or so Yeonjun says.

“What do you think of the apartment?”

Soobin blinks. “The apartment? Uh, I like it.”

“Really?”

“Well, it’s definitely better than my place. You’ve got working AC, for one thing.”

Yeonjun huffs. “Soobin, be serious.”

“What do you mean? I am being serious.”

“Really think about it,” Yeonjun pushes, and Soobin doesn’t get why, but he obeys anyway.

He does like the apartment. It’s a one-bedroom, and a bit cramped, but homey, too. Yeonjun’s got an eye for fashion, and it seems to extend to interior decoration, too—he’s filled the space with artfully arranged photos of friends and family, and one funky statement lamp in the living room that Soobin always has turning on and is pretty sure was in a student art exhibit at some point. The couch was bought used, a well-worn but not cracked black leather, and Yeonjun’s thrown a fluffy pink blanket over it in a perfect contradiction that oddly works for him. The kitchen and bathroom are similarly tiny, but everything that needs to work in them does work, and sometimes that’s all you can ask for on a student budget.

Mainly the place feels lived-in. Yeonjun’s put his touch on every corner of it, and to Soobin, that makes it home.

He says as much. “I really do like it, hyung. You’ve made it up all nice, I think that helps. It really feels like a home.”

“It does, right?” Yeonjun nods too quickly, pouncing on his words. “Feel like home.”

“Well, yeah, you live here, so. It is your home.”

“And you said it was better than your place. Didn’t you say that?” Yeonjun starts twitching his fingers against his leg.

An itch starts up on the back of Soobin’s neck, the sense that he’s missing something. “Yeah, hyung. I did… why—”

“Yeah, I agree. I mean, no offense, but your place is kind of… well, anyway, this is a good place for—it’s a good place.”

“Good place for what?”

“It’s just a good place.” Yeonjun’s ears turn a fascinating, delightful red.

When they first started dating, it delighted and surprised Soobin to find out that of the two of them, Yeonjun is actually more likely to blush. Not with everyone, though. Just with Soobin. Soobin barely has to work for it, that wash of pink across Yeonjun’s complexion. He likes to find new ways to tease it out of him, sometimes, just as a fun little challenge.

“Mhm.” Soobin reaches out for Yeonjun’s waist, grabs it with one hand and pulls Yeonjun gently until their chests are touching and peers down at him with narrowed eyes, like he can figure out why Yeonjun’s acting so jumpy from a glance alone. “Didn’t you say you were going to ask me something?”

Yeonjun stares up at him, hair hanging in his face, gloss-slicked mouth parted in surprise. He swallows and Soobin follows the movement of his Adam’s apple. This close, Soobin can smell him, and they smell the same. Same body wash.

Soobin inhales like he can keep Yeonjun there, in his lungs. He wants Yeonjun to ask the question, whatever it is. He has the slightest hunch, just a little sprout in the back of his mind, but he wants it to hear it from his boyfriend’s mouth.

“Are you hungry?” Yeonjun whispers.

Well.

Soobin decides to let Yeonjun get away with that for now. Maybe he’s nervous, or experiencing a random uncharacteristic bout of shyness. Soobin will figure it out, piece by piece.

“Sure, hyung. What you got in the fridge?”

* * *

It turns out that Yeonjun has strawberries in the fridge, as well as a carton of quail eggs and—as Soobin predicted—two dozen tangerines. Soobin opts for the strawberries. Yeonjun washes them to put in a bowl, and Soobin watches him as he does it, the slow movement of his large hands, the press of his front teeth against his bottom lip.

“You’re staring,” Yeonjun accuses without looking at him. His cheeks rise with the force of his smile.

Soobin would’ve looked away if this were week one, back when he was still baffled by Yeonjun’s general existence and interest in him. But where time has made Yeonjun softer, it’s made Soobin bolder. “Yes. What, do you want me to stop?”

Yeonjun turns off the faucet. “Oh, shut up.” That means no, then.

As Yeonjun dries his hands with one of the dish towels, Soobin looks his fill. Yeonjun is so damn beautiful, so far out of his league it’s kind of insane. Nobody should have lips that plush, eyes that warm. The afternoon sun streaming in from the kitchen window lights his skin in honeyed gold. Soobin wants to kiss him stupid. He wants to paint him, photograph him. Make him something eternal.

Sometimes looking at Yeonjun is like standing out in the street in the heat wave, overwhelming enough to make him a little dizzy with it. It changes his breathing pattern, changes the very pumping of his blood inside his veins. Everything he feels and smells and tastes is warmth, is heat. Everything is Yeonjun.

“Come on already,” Yeonjun says. He jokingly shakes the bowl of fruit at Soobin to bait him as he leaves the kitchen. It’s not the strawberries Soobin’s looking at as he follows.

They move to the couch and Yeonjun insists on feeding him, holding up a strawberry in front of his mouth.

“I can feed myself, you know,” Soobin tells him, but he leans forward and bites into the flesh of it anyway. A few drops of juice end up on his mouth, threatening to drip down. Yeonjun presses his thumb against Soobin’s bottom lip before they can.

“I know, but I want to do it anyway.” Yeonjun tilts Soobin’s chin up with one hand and Soobin feels electric when their eyes meet, lit up from the inside. Yeonjun’s gaze slices through him for a moment, before he reins it in to bat his eyelashes innocently. “Because—”

“Don’t say it—”

“—you’re my _baby_.”

“Ah, hyung,” Soobin demurs, like this is the first time Yeonjun’s said this to him. (It isn’t. Not even close.) “That’s too cheesy.”

“No, it’s not, it’s just the truth.” Yeonjun dangles another strawberry above Soobin’s lips with a glint in his eye that spells trouble. “Admit it, Soobinnie.”

Soobin huffs and ducks for the strawberry but Yeonjun yanks it back.

“Admit it and I’ll let you have it,” he promises.

Soobin tries to glare, but he knows the quirk of his lips betrays him. “Don’t care anyway,” he claims, leaning back in haughty nonchalance. “Not hungry.”

“No?” Yeonjun hums. “Then… then admit it or I won’t kiss you anymore.”

Soobin considers this. Unconsciously, his eyes flick down to the open triangle of Yeonjun’s mouth, and as he watches, it shapes itself into a shit-eating grin. He glances away, feeling caught.

“Choose wisely,” Yeonjun taunts him. “No kisses for you.”

“Yeah right, you couldn’t go without kissing me for a day if it killed you.” Soobin bats away the hand Yeonjun swipes at him with, laughing all the while. They’re both fronting, of course. Neither of them are the type to play hard-to-get. That’s not how it happened for them; it happened easy, easy. Not without work, though.

“You’re my baby,” Yeonjun reiterates, and his eyes are still a little mischievous but mostly they’re just happy. Soobin doesn’t want to play anymore.

“I’m your baby,” he whispers.

Yeonjun drops a peck to his mouth for his trouble, even though it wasn’t much trouble at all.

* * *

One time, when they’d been waiting for Yeonjun to finish class so they could all get lunch together, Kai had turned to Soobin and asked, “What’s it like, hyung? Being in love?”

Kai was always a bit of a romantic. Soobin had never figured out if he was asking out of plain curiosity or as a means of getting advice, but he’d indulged him all the same.

“It’s easy,” he answered. “Easier than I thought it would be. And so much better. Better every day.”

He remembers the way Kai smiled, angel that he was. “Yeah? It’s not scary?”

Soobin thought on it for a second, watching the students come and go between classrooms. Ahead, Yeonjun slipped out the door of his lecture hall, looking like a soft daydream in his sweater and denim jacket. His eyes searched for Soobin, and when he found him, he smiled. Soobin smiled too.

“Of course it’s scary,” he told Kai without taking his eyes off of Yeonjun. “But every day, I realize that I’m braver than I thought I was.”

And it’s true. Love looks different when you’re on the inside of it, when you’ve molded it to fit your own hands. Falling in love with Yeonjun wasn’t actually like falling, or even tripping. It wasn’t like a tidal wave. It was just a gentle slide downward, like wading out into a sun-warm swimming pool. Soobin let the water carry him on his back, let it lap around his shoulders and his neck, and then he closed his eyes and just… sank. He held his breath just before he went under—prepared, as he likes to be in all things.

Because he knew, didn’t he? He always knew that it would be Yeonjun, from the first collision, the first shared glance and smile. You could call it what you want: magnetism, destiny, the guiding hand of fate. Soobin didn’t need a name for it to know what it did to him. What it made of him.

All their friends like to joke that Soobin and Yeonjun are on a marathon down Easy Street, all the way to the finish line. They bicker but they never fight. They bend but they never snap.

Kai calls them _the lucky ones_. Taehyun calls them _insufferable_.

In reality, it’s somewhere in the middle. Soobin didn’t always know how to talk to Yeonjun, how to hold on when the rollercoaster took a sharp turn. Sometimes they really did move too fast.

Too fast like this: Soobin met Yeonjun’s parents before he learned what Yeonjun’s favorite color is.

Too fast like this: A few weeks ago, Soobin and Taehyun went shopping, and Soobin hovered silently in front of the rings in a jewelry shop’s window display for just a millisecond too long—just long enough to think about it—before snapping out of it.

Too fast like this: Four months in, Yeonjun said _I love you._ And Soobin… Soobin said nothing. His throat closed up when he tried to respond, knotted with a fear that knocked the breath out of him.

That was the winter, a brittle cold. That was their worst fight.

It took time for them both to understand it was natural to fight sometimes. Natural to forget to be patient, to forget that they’ll both get where they need to be in the end. House of cards, slight breeze. It all comes tumbling down, but once the dust settles, you just draw a new hand and rebuild. Soobin was learning that these days. Yeonjun was teaching him that.

They bicker. They take breaks. They make roadmaps. Yeonjun is good at breaking things down until Soobin feels silly for worrying about them. At turning on the lights so the monsters in the closet are just shadows.

“If you don’t know something about me,” Yeonjun said after they’d agreed to let each other in again, when the first signs of spring were just beginning to appear, “just ask. I’ll ask you too. If there’s something you need me to know, you have to tell me.”

“I’m trying,” Soobin promised, and Yeonjun reached for his hand to squeeze. “Sometimes I just get stuck in my head. We’re so intertwined but it hasn’t been that long, right? Sometimes I just think… what if I don’t even know you that well? What if you’re still a stranger?”

“Then you’ll get to know me,” Yeonjun said, gravely serious. “I have my doubts too, but what matters is that we try, right? I think it’s okay that we have to learn each other. I don’t know you like Beomgyu knows you, or the kids. I know you like _I_ know you. Maybe that doesn’t mean a lot to you yet, but it will.” Yeonjun smiled at him, warm and confident. “Because it means everything to me.”

Soobin felt his knees weaken, so overwhelmed and so, so grateful. Choi Yeonjun, his hard-earned miracle. “I want it to mean everything to me, too.”

“You do?”

“Yeah.” Soobin took a deep breath. “I love you, so I do.”

Soobin sank lower in the swimming pool, and found Yeonjun waiting for him at the bottom.

* * *

The hours pass in a lazy summer haze, meandering through afternoon to early evening. Once the strawberries are gone, they make out for a bit on the couch, mouths still sticky-sweet. Soobin rests a hand over Yeonjun’s stomach to steady himself, feeling how his muscles tighten at the touch beneath his shirt, how they expand as he breathes in.

Kissing Yeonjun is nothing like Soobin’s pathetic first kisses had been, shy little pecks in the parking lot at school. Kissing Yeonjun is breath, and saliva, and not even a little bit of oxygen between them. It’s hot and wet and _good_ , something like rapture.

Kissing Yeonjun is a pure sugar rush. Ice cream sundae, salted caramel drizzle. Soobin’s been working up an appetite as long as he’s known the taste—he’s not sure he’ll ever get full.

Eventually it peters out into nothing more than lazy brushes of their lips, no finesse or care for the art of it. Soobin falls asleep and ends up dozing for a couple hours, head in Yeonjun’s lap, as Yeonjun sets his laptop up and catches up on one of the dramas he’s been behind on lately. When he wakes, Yeonjun shows Soobin his new lock screen, which is just a closeup shot of Soobin’s face, slack and open in slumber. His hair is a mess and, embarrassingly, there’s a patch of drool drying in a shiny spot on his chin.

“You better delete that, hyung,” Soobin warns, though it comes out just this side of whiny.

“Never. It’s so cute!”

“If you think my drool is cute, you must be as obsessed with me as everyone says you are.”

“And if I am? What’ll you do about it?” Yeonjun blows him a kiss and Soobin squishes his cheeks between his hands so he can’t speak anymore. The glare he receives is worth it. He thinks Yeonjun likes him a little mean, anyway.

Soobin doesn’t fall back asleep, but he keeps his head on Yeonjun’s lap for the rest of the episode.

At some point Yeonjun turns to him and says, “Let me do your makeup,” and Soobin says, “Okay.”

Yeonjun drags out his camera and his tripod—joint birthday gifts from Beomgyu, Taehyun, and Kai—along with his many palettes and puffs and tubes, and they film it, like they’re on a YouTube channel. Yeonjun does actually have a channel ( _JUST_LIGHT_ ) with, so far, zero videos and one subscriber ( _choisoob00_ ). He’s been creating an entire backlog of tutorials and product reviews and other makeup-related videos that he might, maybe, possibly upload someday.

“It might be nothing,” he insists every time he films one. “I’m just… I’ll see.”

“It could be something, though,” Soobin always tells him. “Could be something really great, hyung.”

Yeonjun is methodical about his process. He rearranges the lamps in the living room for better lighting when he realizes the afternoon light may not last as long as he needs. He films a peppy intro, and lays out all his brushes in size order on the table. He picks purple tones for the eyeshadow, and sweeps glittery powder over Soobin’s lids with practiced precision.

“You should let me put rhinestones under your eyes sometime,” he murmurs.

“Won’t that itch? Don’t you have to use, like, glue or something?”

Yeonjun turns Soobin’s head to the left just slightly with a _tsk_. “You have so much to learn, babe.”

If he’s honest, Soobin zones out a little as Yeonjun chatters on to his imaginary viewers, focusing instead on how close Yeonjun is like this. How content he looks swatching colors on Soobin’s arms to test if they’ll work with his skin tone. Soobin lets his eyes linger on the slope of Yeonjun’s nose, the way light drapes itself over his cheekbones like it knows Yeonjun is art. He’s been closer than this to Yeonjun so many times, and yet he still finds himself breathless when Yeonjun reaches up with delicate fingers to pluck a fallen eyelash from Soobin’s cheek.

With his bright pink hair falling in his eyes, he makes Soobin’s world feel more colored-in, saturation on high. Like everything in Soobin’s vision before Yeonjun appeared was muted, missing something.

“Okay, this is the finished look,” he finally says, holding up a little hand mirror for Soobin with a flourish. “What do you think?”

Soobin doesn’t know much about makeup, but he blinks in awe at the new heaviness of his eyes, washed in violet and sparkling. His mouth is stained red too, and he brings a self-conscious hand up to it that Yeonjun has to grab so Soobin doesn’t smudge his work. He looks like something ethereal, like he was kissed by an angel. Looking up at Yeonjun’s anxious, expectant face, he supposes he was.

“It looks so good,” Soobin gushes. “You’re really good at this, hyung.”

“Yeah, well.” Yeonjun busies himself with turning off the camera and putting his brushes away, but he can’t hide his pleased smirk. “The apartment has good lighting.”

Soobin grins. “Yes. The apartment.”

Yeonjun turns over his shoulder. Soobin waits for Yeonjun to say it. He’s pretty sure, now, what the hints mean: the emphasis on the apartment, the reminder that Soobin is his baby. The nerves that haven’t totally disappeared. Soobin, with an intensity that surprises him, wants Yeonjun to say it. It’s not something he’d really given consideration to before, but now that he knows—thinks—it’s on the table—

“I like the apartment, hyung,” Soobin says, echoing their conversation from earlier. “I like _you_. I like the apartment because it has you in it.” Soobin reaches out for Yeonjun’s hand, brings it to his lips so that Yeonjun has to look up at him as he kisses his palm, his knuckles, each of his fingertips in succession. The lipstick transfers, but neither of them mention it.

“Yeonjun,” Soobin calls gently. No honorific, like Yeonjun’s said he wants Soobin to do when they have a Serious Conversation, when he wants them to stand as equals. When they are both at their most vulnerable, raw and exposed and wanting. Bare skin beneath teeth. Soobin has learned not to fear the bite. “How can you expect me to say yes if you don’t ask me the question?”

Yeonjun licks his lips and then nods to himself, turning toward the window where the late afternoon burns gold. He blows out a breath from puffed cheeks. “I will,” he promises. “Just… dinner first?”

* * *

Dinner. Yeonjun’s kitchen, Yeonjun’s rules. He hands Soobin a knife and some mushrooms and stations him in front of a cutting board.

Soobin is used to cooking with his family growing up, but he never really had the skill for it like his mother and his older brother did. Watching Yeonjun move around the kitchen with such ease like this, slicing and stirring like a pro, is nearly awe-inspiring. It’s domestic in a way that makes Soobin ache for home, for the way Yeonjun would fit in there if Soobin took him.

He makes a mental note to ask about Yeonjun’s plans for Chuseok.

Soobin locks eyes with Yeonjun once he finishes removing the stems from his mushrooms and Yeonjun’s smile is bashful, sweet. Soobin revels in it; he doesn’t look away until Yeonjun pushes at his cheek with a finger, saying, “Focus on what you’re doing.”

“I’m done, though,” he whines.

“Fine, then come taste this.” Yeonjun holds a sauce-covered spoon out and in the back of Soobin’s mind something whispers, _This could be the rest of my life._ The sauce has a kick to it, a sharp twist of flavor. He likes it. He wants more.

As Yeonjun cooks, Soobin goes searching for what they’ll need to set the table. Everything in Yeonjun’s kitchen is mismatched, a hodgepodge collection that tells a story of the places he’s been, the people he’s known. The drawers house a handful of wooden chopsticks whose partners have been lost to time and the move from dorm to apartment, metal serving spoons with fake ruby-encrusted handles passed down to him by his grandmother, even a spare plastic knife or two stolen from the dining hall.

The items in his cabinets were similarly acquired: novelty shot glasses Beomgyu brought back from vacation who knows where. A small stack of delicate gilded plates—his mother claimed he’d need one set of good dishware; for what, Yeonjun tells Soobin as he stirs the pot, he has no idea. “S’not like I’ll be having dinner parties here or anything.”

The plates sit beneath the plastic Kakao Friends dish set Yeonjun nabbed off Kai while helping him do some spring cleaning earlier that year (because apparently those _are_ very useful). And in the drying rack sits one now-chipped handpainted mug, courtesy of Taehyun and a barely passed ceramics class, turned upside down.

“Your kitchen is full of the people you love, huh?” Soobin says as he stares into the open cabinet above the sink.

“Yep. Makes sense you’re standing in it, then, doesn’t it?” Yeonjun winks.

A revelation burns underneath Soobin’s skin, hotter than any summer weather he’s faced today. _This could be the rest of my life._ He swallows down his sudden desire, accepting the kiss on the cheek Yeonjun gives him, and chooses the Kakao Friends bowls.

* * *

The food is _good_. Yeonjun is a damn good cook, and his catlike grin as Soobin sighs at his first bite tells Soobin he knows it. Soobin scoops some rice into his mouth and lets the quiet settle for a couple minutes, just the sound of utensils against dishes and Yeonjun’s quiet chewing.

He waits, patiently.

Finally, Yeonjun says, “Okay, I really am gonna ask you something now. And it’s a big thing.”

“Okay.”

“I don’t…” Yeonjun scratches at his elbow, avoids all eye contact. His hair falls in his face and Soobin itches to tuck it back behind his ear for him. “I don’t really know how to ask you this. I know you already know what it is, or you can guess, but I still can’t just… ask.”

Yeonjun keeps dragging his spoon against the inside of his bowl, slow and methodical like it can clear his mind. Soobin watches him do it once, twice, mesmerized by those careful hands.

“Why not?” Soobin asks, curious. “You always know how to ask for things. You weren’t afraid at all to ask me to be your boyfriend, remember?”

Soobin remembers. His earnest posture, that matter-of-fact tone. The Yeonjun of then had feared nothing. Had wanted everything.

Maybe he still does.

“That was different.”

“Why?”

Yeonjun sighs, clearly frustrated with himself.

“You can ask me anything, you know,” Soobin reminds him lightly. “I’ll give you anything, hyung. You know that.”

“I don’t want you to give me this because I want it. I only want you to give me it if you want it too.” Biting his lip, he admits, “And I really, really want you to want it.”

“Then… then I’ll give you honesty,” Soobin decides. “We can start there. Will you give me that too?”

Yeonjun swallows hard. “Okay. Okay.” No more talking around it.

What Yeonjun doesn’t know is that Soobin already knows the question, already has his answer. It feels like an inevitability after today, the easy domesticity of it. How they are always making space for each other in some ways, filling gaps for each other in others.

Yeonjun puts his spoon down, and breathes out slow. “Sometimes, I’m fucking terrified of how much I like you.”

Soobin blinks.

“When I told you to come over—” Yeonjun clears his throat, he’s blushing, but he doesn’t look away. “You have no idea how bad I wanted to say _home. Come home, Soobin-ah._ ”

“And that’s scary?”

“Of course it is.” Yeonjun laughs without sound. He grabs Soobin’s hand where it rests on the table and yes, this is better. It’s better when they’re connected like this, palm to palm, nowhere to run and hide. No reason to want to.

Yeonjun says, “When I asked you to go out with me, I knew I liked you and I thought it could be fun. That was pretty much it. I was a little kid and you were the cupcake in the bakery window. I was expecting to like you. I wasn’t expecting to—”

After a long, silent moment, Soobin prompts, “Expecting to?”

“I wasn’t expecting to be this scared of fucking it all up.” Yeonjun squeezes his hand. “You’re not just a shiny toy, or a sweet treat. You’re… my most cherished person.”

Soobin’s lips part. Yeonjun intertwines their fingers, grip tight like he’s begging him not to let go.

Soobin would never. He squeezes back.

“I know we agreed to talk to each other, and to say what we need, but it’s easier said than done. I almost—scared you off once.”

Yeonjun doesn’t say it, but Soobin knows they’re both thinking of it. The winter, their coldest days, their worst fight. Tear tracks and snot. Yeonjun’s trembling voice, Soobin’s panicked deflection. _I love you_ , and silence. _I love you_ —and nothing.

“I can’t do that again,” Yeonjun whispers. “I wouldn’t be able to take it.”

He doesn’t need to be afraid, Soobin thinks. Not now that Yeonjun has gained some patience and Soobin has learned vulnerability. The ice has long since cracked and melted. Summer always returns, and they’re in the thick of it now.

“Scared me off?” he repeats. “Hyung, that’s not what that was. I scared myself, because I didn’t understand the—the _size_ of what I felt for you. _Feel_ for you. How much I love you.” He needs Yeonjun to know this, needs him to understand. He slides out of his chair and moves around to the other side of the table. Without a second of hesitation, he kneels beside Yeonjun, arms around his waist, cheek against his stomach. He holds on tight. “You can’t scare me. I’m not running anymore.”

A gentle hand that shakes ever so slightly rests on the top of Soobin’s head. “No?” Yeonjun’s fingers begin to card through his hair, still soft from the shower.

“No,” Soobin confirms, speaking into Yeonjun’s shirt. “I want all of it. The mess and the risk. Want all of you.”

“I do too,” Yeonjun whispers, biting down a smile.

Soobin laughs. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Yeonjun confesses. “I’m putting down stepping stones for a life with you.”

 _A life with you_. Soobin’s heart shoots up into his throat. Into the stratosphere. Explodes like a firework, light and joy.

“Stepping stones, huh? And what are they?”

“Well, first,” Yeonjun says, and his voice lowers, just the tiniest bit, “we’ll move in together. That’s step one.” Soobin hides his smile against Yeonjun’s stomach at the words finally being out there. No more talking around it.

“Okay, then what?”

“Then… then things will be mostly the same. Just better. Sweeter. You’ll spoon-feed me soup when I’m sick, and I’ll massage your shoulders when they start to ache from letting everyone else lean on you all the time. We’ll skip parties to make out on the couch at home.”

“We already do that now.”

“Yes. We do. But then I’ll also teach you how to cook proper food, and you’ll teach me how to be kind to myself. And I’ll trip over all the clothes you leave on the floor, and then we’ll fight about it, and _then_ we’ll laugh about it. We’ll learn how to be less obsessed with each other, but not any less in love.”

Soobin looks up. “In love?”

They’ve exchanged _I love you_ ’s so many times by now they do it without thinking, but... _in_ love. A ribbon of warmth curls around Soobin’s heart and ties itself in a neat little bow.

“Of course we’re in love, Soobinnie. What else did you think it was called, the way I smile when I see you?”

Can love be this simple? Is it allowed to be this simple?

Yeonjun is still shaking, but he smiles slow, like the sunrise. Maybe it’s not out of fear, but anticipation. A foregone conclusion.

“Ask me,” Soobin pleads. “I want all that too, so we have to start with step one. Ask me now. Are you still afraid?”

Yeonjun cradles Soobin’s face between his hands. It’s been hours, but his smile is still strawberry pink.

“You make me unafraid,” Yeonjun tells him.

Kneeling before Yeonjun like this, face held in his hands, Soobin feels blessed, sun-kissed, glowing from within. He stares up at the boy he loves—this real, living, breathing boy who still gets shy. A crooked, rueful smile, a complexion that blooms a bashful pink. Soobin wants, for one nonsensical moment, to press his face against Yeonjun’s and feel the flush for himself. Wants the warmth on Yeonjun’s cheeks to seep into Soobin’s own skin.

That is the best way to know a person, after all: to feel the things they feel.

Yeonjun asks, “Will you move in with me?”

It feels like a bigger question than it is. Step one, hurtling toward something greater. A rocket ship. Up and up and up. Scary, sure, but God, if the view isn’t gorgeous.

“Of course, hyung,” Soobin says, at last, at last. “Of course I will.”

* * *

They get to dessert, finally. It takes a while because they’re so giddy over their decision that Soobin kisses Yeonjun and then they just… don’t stop, making out at the table, on the way to the kitchen, right next to the sink. Kissing and kissing and kissing. Just like the body wash from earlier, they taste the same now, same food for dinner. Soobin likes these little bits of sameness just as much as their little bits of difference. He likes finding a piece of himself in the puzzle.

Soobin knows with a kind of glee, as he licks into Yeonjun’s hot, open mouth, that when he pulls away he’ll have remnants of pink lip gloss on his face. He crowds Yeonjun against the kitchen counter, dirty dishes in the sink be damned, until the only thing left on Yeonjun’s lips is the memory of Soobin. He kisses him deeper, closer. Their chests press together. Yeonjun tips his chin up further. Again, again. Again.

Surely the honeymoon phase ends eventually, he muses as Yeonjun’s hands tug his hair into a state of ruin. Surely one day he will look at Yeonjun and blink to find that all the buffet tables are empty and he’s nauseous from overeating. But it’s been four seasons already, and Soobin is still hungry.

“Soobin,” Yeonjun mumbles against him. He’s so _warm_ , lips swollen and puffy, shiny with spit. He tries to speak again and Soobin kisses his teeth. “ _Soobin_.”

“Mm. Yeah, yeah, what?”

They break apart but Soobin doesn’t let him get far, hand pushing gently on his nape to keep him in place.

Yeonjun is a vision like this, chest heaving, cheeks blotchy. He’s pink all over: hair, mouth, skin. His rose-colored boy, made of love itself. He makes Soobin think in sappy poems, in song lyrics. Starlight and sunshine and summer.

Yeonjun pouts. “I want ice cream.”

It’s not the kind of _hungry_ Soobin meant, but it’s not a bad idea. They should cool down, anyway.

“Yeah.” He sneaks in one last peck, because he can and he wants to. “Ice cream sounds great.”

Yeonjun had bought a carton each for them, and Soobin polishes off half his pint in record time. They shared the strawberries but they don’t share ice cream, because as romantic as Soobin wants to be, even he has his limits and they include not eating mint choco under any circumstances. Yeonjun makes a show of licking his spoon and humming contentedly about the supposedly refreshing taste of his dessert. Soobin doesn’t rise to the bait, if only because his lack of response makes Yeonjun huff and pout like a little kid.

When Soobin finally sets his spoon aside, Yeonjun pulls out a cheap bottle of wine. Soobin jokes, “All we did today was eat.”

“Nothing wrong with a little indulgence.” Yeonjun smiles, brushes the back of his hand down Soobin’s cheek. “Had to spoil my baby.”

Soobin scoffs because he knows Yeonjun’s laying it on thick on purpose, but he’s flushed and pleased by the words, too. He thinks Yeonjun’s right, there really is nothing wrong with a little indulgence. Life is short, dessert is sweet, and Yeonjun is, too. So fuck moderation. As far as Soobin’s concerned, those are reasons enough to savor the taste. To devour.

Yeonjun puts on music and at some point they trade their chairs for the kitchen floor. They sit with their backs against the cabinets, passing the bottle back and forth and taking swigs. Each sip settles warm in Soobin’s belly, adding weight to his still-glittery eyelids. Sleepy drinker. Always has been.

“So we’re moving in together,” Soobin says. “For real.”

“For real.” Yeonjun stretches his legs out in front of him. “In this for the long haul now, huh, Soobinnie?”

“We always were,” Soobin answers. Four first dates in a week, breaking up then making up. Yeonjun has parts of Soobin he’ll never get back, never want back. His egg yolk heart sitting in the center of Yeonjun’s palm. This was never casual.

“How dare you make an honest man out of me,” Yeonjun sighs, though he doesn’t look upset in the slightest. “It’s such a shame.”

“Is it?”

“Yeah. I’m gonna be so _boring_ at parties now. I’m gonna show up and tell everyone about my boyfriend and how I’m leaving early to go home because I miss him. I always hated those people for rubbing their happiness in everyone else’s faces, and now look at me. I’m one of them.”

“You don’t seem to mind.” Soobin matches Yeonjun’s smirk with his own.

“No, I don’t,” Yeonjun agrees, giggling. “That’s the worst part.”

The song changes to something slower. Yeonjun rests his head on Soobin’s shoulder. Outside, the evening sun sinks like a stone and darkness settles like dust over the little slice of sky visible from Yeonjun’s kitchen window. Soobin wonders if the temperature’s finally dipped below unbearable by now, if his landlord has gotten his request to fix his AC and will take care of it tomorrow. He wonders if, come morning, he’ll be able to bring himself to leave.

The heat wave will end but this doesn’t have to. Summer won’t last forever, but this could.

This could.

He takes another swig of wine. Time goes liquid and slow, melting like ice cream. It could be minutes or hours that they stay like that on the floor, quiet but comfortable. All Soobin knows is it sure is sweet.

* * *

“Come on,” Yeonjun says eventually. “Sitting on the floor is making my ass sore. It’s bedtime.”

“Before midnight? Alright, ahjussi,” Soobin teases, and answers Yeonjun’s _yah!_ with a snicker.

Soobin steals pajamas from Yeonjun because he’d forgotten to bring his own. Sharing clothes usually works better for them when it’s the other way around, because Soobin’s legs are too long for the pants and his ankles stick out past the hem, but it’ll work for one night. He thinks the shirt Yeonjun gives him only fits because it was originally his.

They brush their teeth side-by-side in the bathroom, constantly elbowing one another in the cramped space. Soobin smiles at them in the mirror when he sees how much taller he is.

Once they’re done, Yeonjun takes a makeup wipe to Soobin’s face and erases his hard work from the afternoon. He pouts as he does it.

“You can just put more on me tomorrow if you want,” Soobin offers. “Could even do those rhinestones you wanted, I don’t mind.”

He perks up. “Really?”

“Of course.”

Yeonjun stares at him for a moment and traces a finger down the bridge of his nose, gentle. “You’re very good to me, you know that?”

Soobin shrugs. “Why would I be anything else to you?”

Yeonjun just brushes Soobin’s hair out of his eyes for him, looking all gooey-soft.

Yeonjun’s bedroom—their bedroom, soon—is Soobin’s favorite part of the apartment. It’s kept surprisingly neat, queen bed fitted with navy sheets, and it’s always quiet and dark, thanks to the blackout curtains and the white noise machine set up on his desk. Yeonjun’s room is one of those places where nothing beyond its walls exist once you step inside. Soobin’s slept and studied and cuddled in this bed, and he sinks down onto it like he’s greeting an old friend.

The right side is Soobin’s side. This is a known fact even if they don’t permanently share a bed yet, established through many nights spent sleeping over and Yeonjun’s claim that he needs to be closer to the door for whatever reason. It makes it easy for them to sprawl across the mattress without argument now, at any rate, and easier still for Yeonjun to curl into Soobin’s side and shove his icy feet under Soobin’s calves.

He grunts. “You need to start wearing socks to sleep.”

“But then I couldn’t annoy you with my cold feet, and that’s no fun.” Yeonjun wiggles his toes just to mess with him. “Movie?”

“Sure.” Soobin checks his phone for the time and sees a message from Beomgyu begging him to read over his resume so he can submit an internship application.

“Who are you texting?” Yeonjun smushes his cheek against Soobin’s to see the screen. “Ugh.”

Soobin laughs. “You can pretend all you want, but we all know you love him, hyung.”

The Beomgyu-Yeonjun thing is more of a running gag than any real tension: Yeonjun likes to complain that Beomgyu stole his time with Soobin, and Beomgyu latched onto the joke early on because he thinks it’s funny when Soobin gets flustered by Yeonjun’s dramatic tendencies. Soobin wonders sometimes if he and Yeonjun get a little too wrapped up in each other, but he knows they’ll mellow out with time. Probably.

Yeonjun harrumphs. “He’s alright, sometimes”—Soobin snorts—“but I’d like to get back to kissing you, if that’s alright.”

“I thought you wanted to watch a movie,” Soobin says innocently.

“Soobin, I will chuck your phone out the window.”

Soobin’s still laughing when Yeonjun yanks him in, and the sound dissolves airy and fizzy like bubbles as Yeonjun nibbles at Soobin’s earlobe. He feels weightless, like he’s floating in the pool. Everything’s so soft, the fabric of Yeonjun’s pajamas where he runs his hands down his sides, the pillows cushioning his head, even Yeonjun’s hair where it tickles his cheek. He lets Yeonjun take his time with it, mapping out Soobin’s throat with his mouth before coming back up and shifting so he’s halfway on top of him. It’s syrup-slow, like they’ll have forever, all the time in the world. And they do. They do.

 _You make me feel like I’m more than just a person,_ Soobin wants to say. _Like I’m a supernova. More than that, even. A thousand ecstatic, dying stars._ But his mouth is occupied, so he settles for squeezing Yeonjun’s hips, pulling him closer, closer.

“Soobin,” Yeonjun murmurs between kisses.

“Mm.”

“We should go on vacation someday. Find a beach somewhere and make out on it.”

Soobin nips at Yeonjun’s bottom lip. “You only want me for my body.”

“No!” he protests, but he’s laughing. “I wanna snorkel with you and see all the fishes.”

“Yeah? You got money to see all the fishes?”

Yeonjun pinches his side and he yelps. “I said _someday_. God, and they call me the brat.”

Soobin bumps their noses together. He doesn’t think his heart is big enough to hold all his fondness, doesn’t think his eyes are big enough to show it all. “Just teasing, hyung. Someday, we’ll go.”

“Yeah? You’ll go on a trip with me?” Yeonjun’s eyes are bright with mischief.

Soobin grins. “Yes.”

Yeonjun presses a kiss to his throat, sweet and perfunctory. “And you’ll move in with me.”

The grin becomes a giddy laugh. “Yes,” he whispers.

“You’ll give me... a thousand kisses.”

“Yes.”

“Give me the world.”

“Yes.”

“Marry me.”

“ _Hyung_!”

Yeonjun cackles, fingers digging into Soobin’s ticklish sides. Soobin struggles for a moment under the onslaught before he manages to grab onto Yeonjun’s traitorous hands and gather them up on his chest, right by his racing heart.

“You were kidding, right?” he checks. Yeonjun ignores him, mouths at his ear, at the underside of his jaw. His cheek, his nose, his chin. “Yeonjun-hyung, _right?”_

All he gets in return is a noncommittal hum, but he can feel the curve of Yeonjun’s smile against his collarbone. Soobin can’t believe this is the same boy that was too nervous to ask him to move in just an hour earlier. He must be drunk off the power of one yes. Jesus. Beomgyu is going to have a field day when Soobin tells him about this.

 _Marry me._ Choi Yeonjun is insane.

“We haven’t even been dating for a year,” Soobin reminds him gently, but he’s also reminding himself, calm down, _calm down._ He presses his palms to his flaming cheeks in a futile attempt to cool them.

“True,” Yeonjun confirms. “But sometimes you just know.”

Sometimes you just know. Like sinking underwater, Soobin thinks. Like gravity. Natural instinct.

Maybe it’ll all go as they want it to. They’ll move in and settle down, get married, get a dog. Yeonjun will post those makeup videos to YouTube and become a star, Soobin will figure out what the hell he wants to do with his life and then do it. They’ll put down roots like trees and grow dreams like heavy-hanging fruit, cultivated to full ripeness and then plucked off to make room for the next ones.

Or maybe not. Maybe they’ll crash and burn, tomorrow, a few months from now, a couple years down the line. But life is about looking at your options and then picking the one you really want. Going with your gut. With your heart. Choose your boyfriend’s shoebox apartment over your friend’s luxury condo. Press upload on that video you’ve been sitting on. Lean in and steal a kiss, then two. Then three.

So Soobin blinks up at Yeonjun, at his brightness and his warmth and his heat. He doesn’t dispute him. He goes with his gut. With his heart.

“Yeah,” he breathes. Yeonjun buries his face in the crook of Soobin’s neck. He can feel Yeonjun’s eyelashes where they flutter against his skin, his lips warm and wet against Soobin’s pulse. Soobin has the strangest impulsive urge to curve a hand around the back of Yeonjun’s head and keep him there, tucked against him forever. Two puzzle pieces, slotted together. “I guess sometimes you do.”

**Author's Note:**

> yes, the "you're my baby" moment comes from [that one vlive](https://www.vlive.tv/video/191505). yes, yeonjun really does (or did) have a photo of soobin sleeping [as his phone background](https://twitter.com/moatranslates/status/1276171633691029505) [(and vice versa)](https://twitter.com/moatranslates/status/1276551347643592704). and yes, yeonjun actually [chose "JUST_LIGHT" as a screename](https://twitter.com/moatranslates/status/1242494975792656385).
> 
> also, i'm assuming everyone knows about [txt's tangerine drawer](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EUYkZreWoAAYZVg?format=jpg&name=large), but if you're wondering why there are quail eggs in his fridge, shoutout to the [yeonjun quail eggs rumor](https://twitter.com/TXTbyJ/status/1192442057115066369).
> 
> thank you so much for reading if you made it this far! stay safe, and stay well! ♡
> 
> p.s. you can find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/rnaissances) and [cc](https://curiouscat.me/junijoonie)! come say hi!


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